NSTAR Electric and Gas Corporation Automated Meter Reading-Based Dynamic Pricing Final Technical Report
June 15, 2015
NSTAR Electric and Gas Corporation
jvezina
NSTAR Electric & Gas Corporation developed and implemented a Smart Grid pilot program beginning in 2010 to demonstrate the viability of leveraging existing automated meter reading (AMR) deployments to provide much of the Smart Grid functionality of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), but without the large capital investment that AMI rollouts typically entail. In particular, a central objective of the Smart Energy Pilot was to enable residential dynamic pricing (time-of-use [TOU] and critical peak rates and rebates) and two-way direct load control (DLC) by continually capturing AMR meter data transmissions and communicating through customer-sited broadband connections in conjunction with a standards-based home area network (HAN). The pilot program offerings to customers consisted of 1) a set of new rate options and 2) a set of technologies to enable interval metering, provision of enhanced customer information about pricing and electricity consumption, and (for some participants) automated load response. Each of four customer test groups in the pilot received a unique combination of rates and technologies in order to test hypotheses regarding the impact of technology on load reduction, energy consumption, and the interaction of various technologies and rate structures.
